Eric Avebury

Francis Story The Search for the Self

The search for Self is vain, because it is a search for something that does not exist except as a mythical concept which has had to be taken into the structure of language by common assent. If it is used in any other way than as a fictitious convenience - if it is taken as meaning something real and enduring - it cannot be anything but a stumbling-block to the development of right understanding.

Friday, July 31, 2015

I was pleased to review Lord Avebury who was feeling much better since undergoing angioplasty three weeks ao. He is suffering less pain and able to move better. He has lateral left ankle
ulcer which is healing gradually and I explained it could take a few weeks to heal completely. He was instructed to leave it open, I am happy for Lord Avebury to continue on Hydroxycarbamide 0.5 g three days a week in addition to Aspirin and Clopidogrel and arranged to see him again in three months.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Sayed Jameel Kadhim, president of Al Wefaq's consultative board, has been released after fully serving a 6 month sentence for expressing political opinions. Sheikh Hussain Aldaihi, Al Wefaq's Deputy Secretary General, says the Bahraini regime must stop targeting dissidents and begin a reconciliation with its people, but this can only happen if there is far stronger pressure by the international community for human and political rights. Al Wefaq was the only opposition political party that had a very confined space in which to operate, but since late 2014 their leaders have been targeted in a wave of spurious criminal charges.Meanwhile, Amnesty International has released a statement on the occasion of the opening of the trial of 57 persons, mostly detainees in Jaw prison [http://bit.ly/1JNUtjP] calling on the Bahraini authorities to make public their investigations into allegations of torture and other ill-treatment of inmates in the prison at the ime of the March 10 disorders and in the following weeks.

Friday, July 24, 2015

When prominent Bahraini opposition leader
Ibrahim Sharif was released from prison last month after serving four years and
three months of a five year sentence, supporters of the Bahraini government
presented it as evidence of the country’s continued appetite for reform. The
Obama administration even justified its decision to restore military aid to
Bahrain on the grounds that unnamed political prisoners - presumably including
Sharif - had been released from prison and “meaningful progress on human rights
reform” was being made (a statement which echoes British Foreign Secretary
Philip Hammond’s declaration earlier this year that Bahrain was “making significant
reform”).

Six weeks later, however, and Sharif is back in prison, facing
charges of inciting hatred against the regime. His arrest is believed to be
linked to a speech he made at a memorial service for a 16-year-old boy who was
killed by police in 2012, during which he called for reform and reconciliation
and described violence as a tactic of the government, rather than the political
opposition. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as
Bahraini human rights organisations, have since called for Sharif’s
unconditional and immediate release.

Sharif’s re-arrest is significant not just because it
contradicts the Bahraini government’s narrative of reform, but also because it
demonstrates the fallacy of another argument which the monarchy and its
supporters have been keen to make: that Bahrain’s political crisis is driven by
a sectarian protest movement comprised exclusively of the country’s
marginalised Shia majority. Sharif, however, is a secular Sunni Muslim who
espouses sectarian unity and non-violence and enjoys the respect of both Shia
and Sunni opposition activists in Bahrain. It is perhaps for this reason that
the government considers him such a threat.

As one of thirteen prominent opposition leaders who were
imprisoned in 2011 for their role in Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement, Sharif
was held in solitary confinement for 56 days and subjected to torture,
including sexual abused, beating and deprivation of sleep. With Sharif back in
detention, the rest of the Bahrain Thirteen still behind bars and the
General-Secretary of the country’s largest opposition bloc al-Wefaq Sheikh Ali
Salman recently sentenced to four years in prison for inciting “hatred” and
“disobedience” against the regime, the entire leadership of Bahrain’s political
opposition is now in jail.

Other prominent figures have also faced reprisals from the
government in recent weeks, including Al-Wefaq board member Majeed Milad who
was detained in early July in relation to his participation in a political
seminar. Another opposition leader, Fadhel Abbas, who heads the Al-Wahdawi
political society, was sentenced to five years in prison on June 28 for
criticising the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen. The imprisoned Al-Wefaq leader’s
deputy Khalil Al-Marzouq was also summoned by the Ministry of Interior on June
30 for questioning about a speech he gave.

The United States responded to the wave of arrests by issuing a
statement of concern and calling for the government of Bahrain to “protect the
universal rights of free expression and assembly.” The United Kingdom, however,
has remained silent. Its recent statements on Bahrain have failed to call for
the release of political prisoners and even criticised Al-Wefaq for boycotting
parliamentary elections last November which it bizarrely deemed “transparent.”
As the crackdown on the political opposition continues to intensify, Britain’s
behaviour will provide little incentive for the government of Bahrain to
reverse course and engage in meaningful reform and dialogue. On the contrary,
it may embolden the regime and encourage more repression.

This scan was performed at 15.30 this afternoon at the request of Vascular, I think when they were considering a graft to replace my left femoral artery, and perhaps they forgot to cancel it when the angioplasty was successful. Anyway it is reassuring to know that the heart doesn't appear to have deteriorated since a cardiac trans thoracic scan was carried out on June 19 last year when I was an inpatient. The technician said that she would confirm this after looking at the two scans side by side.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

At the AGM of the APPG on Dalits on July 6 I was re-elected as vice-chair, Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Harries remaining as co-Chairs. The Group arranged to pepper the Government with questions to pin down their intentions about the legislation agreed as long ago as April 20013, to add caste to the listed characteristics in the Equality Act. The Government are now arguing that the case of Tirkey v Chandhok is a precedent for cases of caste discrimination, but the judge in that case said the court was addressing the particular circumstances of the case, and the determination wouldn't necessarily apply to other cases. This means that a litigant would have to show that his case was on all fours with Tirkey before proceeding to his substantive argument, making attempts to gain redress for caste discrimination expensive,

In July 2013 the Secretary of State for Communities and Local
Government [SSCLG] issued a Written Ministerial Statement [WMS] providing that
Traveller Appeals in the Green Belt [GB] would no longer be decided by
independent Inspectors but were ‘recovered’ – that is, decided by the SS
himself. Rather than being issued around 8 weeks after the hearing, these
recovered Appeals took literally years. Two Travellers, Mrs Moore and Mrs
Coates, challenged the WMS in Court and on January 21, 2015 Mr Justice Gilbart
allowed both of their Judicial Review applications. The judge said:

“I have found that the
challenges based on breaches of the Equality Act 2010 and of Article 6 of the
European Convention of Human Rights have succeeded. Both are part of the law of
England and Wales. These are not to be dismissed as technical breaches.. The
Article 6 challenge has succeeded because substantial delays have occurred in
dealing with the appeals of Mrs Moore and Ms Coates, and with many other cases.
In the context of delay, Article 6 of the ECHR does no more than encapsulate
the long standing principle of the common law that justice should not be
unreasonably delayed, as it was and has been here. The Claimants were and are
entitled to have their appeals determined within a reasonable time…I have no
doubt that the Secretary of State and his Ministers will not seek to carry on a
practice which this Court has ruled unlawful. …But it must also be said that the issues raised by Mrs Moore and Ms
Coates are not limited to their appeals. There are, as the figures set above
demonstrate, many others whose appeals have been recovered and who must be
experiencing delays, as are those who oppose their appeals. If, as appears to
be the case, the appeals were recovered not because of their merits but because
they were cases of travellers’ pitches in the Green Belt, then the effect of
the judgment will be to call into question the legality of many other
recoveries…”

Following this judgment, the SSCLG ‘de-recovered’ all those Appeals that
were undecided and claimed he had no power to revoke the many decisions he had
taken pursuant to the unlawful WMS (which is the subject of on-going
litigation). For Mrs Moore and Mrs Coates, their wait was not yet over, despite
the Court having found unlawful delay. When the target date for issuing Mrs
Coates’ Appeal passed at the end of June, a further Judicial Review was
threatened if the Decision was not issued by 17.00 on July 15, 2015. Both Mrs Coates and Mrs Moore’s Appeals were
issued within 5 minutes of each other just after lunch on that day – and both
Appeals were allowed. The planning consultant for both appellants, who was also
their expert witness in the High Court, was Dr Angus Murdoch MRTPI (angus@murdochplanning.co.uk). For
a commentary on the Green Belt recovery cases by the Community Law Partnership see http://bit.ly/1CPE8OG.

None of the Travellers whose appeals were delayed by the
unlawful actions of the SSCLG has received any compensation for the stress and
uncertainty he caused them.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Thursday, July 09, 2015

Under the Department for Communities and Local Government 'Planning Policy for Traveller Sites' of March 2012, local authorities are obliged to 'use a robust evidence base to establish accommodation needs' and to 'set pitch targets for Gypsies and Travellers and plot targets for travelling showpeople which address the likely permanent and transit site accommodation needs of travellers in their area'.

Many local authorities have been avoiding their statutory obligations under these rules since 2012. At my request Dr Simon Ruston of Ruston Planning has produced a report showing that Dorset local authorities will not have produced a Joint Development Plan Document for Traveller sites until the end of 2016, and in the meanwhile only one pitch has been provided against a need assessed at 138 pitches, As Dr Ruston points out in an email to me,

'What the report sets out clearly is the failure of policy on the part of the Dorset councils over the last 5 years in completing work on a cross border Development Plan Document.'